SNIP

 

Brazilian Rosewood is the gold standard for guitar back and sides.  Osage Orange
is called "poor man’s Brazilian Rosewood” because of very similar density and
Janka numbers.  Janka is a little known wood characteristic that instrument
makers look at.  It uses a stylus with a 1/4” steel ball at the end and measures
the pressure needed to embed the ball 1/2 way into the wood.

 

The general rule is that darker woods lighten and lighter woods darken

 

Ed Minch

 

END SNIP

 

 

Ed:

 

Very interesting.  Yes, I know about Brazilian Rosewood.  My Ramirez has that,
with a cedar top.  Jose R. III experimented with cedar instead of spruce and got
a tone that was somewhat smokier and less direct – considered ideal by some of
the great Spaniards of a generation or two ago for playing the music of the
Spanish Romantic era.  They called it “mysterious,” although I don’t quite get
that.  It is lovely, though, and clearly different from spruce.

 

I only wish I could play it more.  In May I flamed a tendon in the left CMC
joint – maybe arthritic related – and although better it is still pretty sore.
Anything requiring a bar hurts like hell, as do certain stretches.  That kind of
limits what can be played.

 

As to Janka, I have seen those numbers in the wood data, and know how they are
derived, but never knew why they were important.  I always figured they were a
measure of dent resistance.  What is the important to instrument makers and
which way on the scale is preferable?  I am not going to build guitars, but as a
years-down-the-road project I have in mind to build a higher-end music box with
a 100+ note movement (if I can afford it), and so have been thinking about
various materials and methods of construction.  I have a couple of good Osage
shorts (about 5” x ¼ x 36”) and had thought to use them somehow, maybe for the
floor to which the movement is connected.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Joe